Johnnie
(Description without
adjectives- Past Tense, First Person)
I remember Johnnie, or
maybe it was someone else, telling me that he had broken one or both his ankles
in the past. Maybe that was the reason he walked the way he did. He thrust his
chest forward, stuck out his arse and swung his legs as he strode along. It
made him waddle like a duck! But nobody would dare say that to his face.
All the foremen and
management at Someplace were characters. The production workers wore uniform
overalls, but each of the supervisors dressed as an individual.
When Johnnie was at work he
balanced a hard-hat at an angle on his head. He wore a blue shirt, beneath a dust-coat,
and round his neck was a brown knitted tie which changed colour with grime from
one end to the other. Nobody else wore a neck-tie at Someplace, but Johnnie
did. Before he left for home at the end of each shift he washed and polished
himself and put on a tweed jacket, but he retained the blue shirt and brown tie
which rather spoiled the effect. I hope he changed them when he got home.
Many years before Johnnie
had done his National Service in the Airforce. It still showed in his bearing.
He was Scotsman and he said that he disliked the base in the east of England
because the country had no hills. Goodness only knows what had made him come to
Somewhere, probably work, like the rest of us. He said that when he left the Airforce
and first came to Someplace his hands had blistered when he first shovelled
coal. That had been a lifetime ago.
(23rd October 2016 – 291 words)
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